


such a fool for you

by oephelia



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Steve Harrington Is a Mess, These are a few of my favourite things, flirting via text, gratuitous gross hippie vibes, use and abuse of richard siken's poems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oephelia/pseuds/oephelia
Summary: The feeling still hits sometimes, the late night loneliness when his roommate’s asleep and he can hear voices down the hall, voices through the cracked-open window. It makes him want to scroll through dozens of iterations of Billy’s face, Benjamin-Buttoning back towards Hawkins and a strange-bitter nostalgia for something he doesn’t think he should miss.Billy Hargrove is online.Steve closes the tab, snaps his laptop shut.(or a love story for the digital age)
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Comments: 24
Kudos: 309
Collections: Harringrove Holiday Exchange 2019





	such a fool for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thursdayknight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursdayknight/gifts).
  * Inspired by [alternate methods of sexting](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/543145) by lydia havens. 



o.

Billy Hargrove is online.

Steve’s never sure if the people up top of the _active now_ bar are random, or, like, somehow algorithmically determined. He doesn’t talk to Billy that much. He doesn’t _think_ about Billy that much. But there Billy is, sun-washed-gold profile picture and little green light, always the first face when Steve opens Facebook. Always the first place his eyes go. 

Their chat history is sparse, and Steve never replied to whatever Billy sent him two weeks ago so. It’s got to be random. 

Still, it makes Steve feel caught out, paranoid, like Mark Zuckerberg knows that, blue-lit, blue-hearted, Steve’s going through all of Billy’s tagged photos. The ones with Max, and by Max, the ones with strangers and mutual high school friends that somehow Billy hasn’t lost track of yet, all the way back to high school, where his hair was longer and his cheeks were softer and he wasn’t sober for a single shot.

It’s just that — it’s just that Steve’s dad had told him, with something like concern that maybe _was_ partly, but was something else as well, that college would be an adjustment. And he’d meant a lot of things, but mostly that it was _easy_ to be popular in Hawkins, where no one was ever more than two degrees of separation away from each other, where everything was steadfastly mediocre and all you had to be was _there_. 

It’s different, when you’re one of thirty thousand people who all seem to know where they’re going, and want to get there fast, and you’re. Just _there_.

So he likes it, seeing Billy on campus sometimes, the back of his head at house parties, hearing his name. Steve’s a sophomore now and he has his own friends, has Robin, but the feeling still hits sometimes, the late night loneliness when his roommate’s asleep and he can hear voices down the hall, voices through the cracked-open window. It makes him want to scroll through dozens of iterations of Billy’s face, Benjamin-Buttoning back towards Hawkins and a strange-bitter nostalgia for something he doesn’t think he should miss. 

Billy Hargrove is online.

Steve closes the tab, snaps his laptop shut.

i.

“Do you ever think,” Steve asks the bathroom ceiling, “that there are people you’re meant to — people that are meant to be in your life, but you keep missing chances, so they’re — _not_ in your life, just. On the edges of it.”

“Like who,” says Billy Hargrove, pink-eyed and drowsy-looking in the bathtub, “ _for example_.”

“Like no one, _for example_ ,” Steve says. Tucks the truth under his tongue. “It’s _hypothetical_.”

“Huh.”

Billy looks like he’s maybe actually considering, focus gone soft, mouth gone soft, one hand disappearing into his open shirt to sit over his heart. Rubbing absently at bare skin, the peekaboo-peak of his nipple. Or he’s lost track of the conversation, lost track of Steve, is just feeling himself up in that syrup-slow way that feels real good when you’ve come most of the way down and the last of the high is static in your ears. 

“I think,” he says, eventually, “you gotta make chances, and then you gotta take them.”

Which Steve should have seen coming, probably.

“You’re such an Aries,” he says.

Billy smiles beatifically back at him.

And Steve doesn’t know how to reframe the question to get the answer he wants. Doesn’t know what answer he wants, only that it’s not the one Billy gave him. He stretches his legs out on the tile, and looks at Billy, the barefoot, lazy-limbed sprawl of him, the slightly sweaty glow, and lets the wave of _wondering_ crash.

The next morning, hazy on the details, Steve finds two four am notifications. 

_billy h has added you on Co-Star._

And then a Facebook message that’s nothing but comet emojis, enough to fill the screen.

ii.

_r u ok_

Steve’s not sure. He thinks maybe he’s having an existential crisis. He thinks maybe it’s none of Billy Hargrove’s business. 

_?_

_uve bn listenin 2 mitski all day_

_go outside_

_???_

Which feels like all Steve can muster. There’s something itchy-impossible about the idea that Billy noticed — that Billy’s sort-of aware of him, the way he’s sort-of aware of Billy, in the Messenger activity bar, the Spotify activity bar, in the corners of his screens and the corners of his eyes. 

He loops back to the beginning of _Nobody_ , to the _my god, I’m so lonely_. 

Watches the three gray dots of Billy typing appear, disappear, appear again.

Starts typing over it.

_take me out then_

Delete delete delete, the clunky keyboard-tap sound of the words eating themselves.

_come over?_

God. Delete.

_wanna grab_

Billy’s reply pops up before Steve can finish the thought.

_change it up x_

Attached, a Youtube link to The Cranberries - Linger (Acoustic Version). When Steve presses play, it’s mournful-sounding violin and dreamy vocals and something that sits in his throat like a stone, gritty and sore and salt-sharp.

He has no idea what to do with it.

He leaves Billy on read.

iii.

Steve falls asleep, _but I’m in so deep_. Wakes up, _you know I’m such a fool for you_. Showers, _you’ve got me wrapped around your finger_. Brushes his teeth, _do you have to let it linger_.

Stares himself down in the mirror, damp and shower-reddened. Feels (pulse hitching) dumb-dumb-dumb when he tries it out loud, “you know I’m such a fool for you.” 

Billy can’t hear him, can’t see him, won’t know how the song’s planted itself in the front of his brain, the spiral of his inner ear, the tip of his tongue. Strange wistful-sad seedlings, growing towards Billy, twisting their faces to catch the glow of him.

“You know I’m such a fool for you.”

It’s so on-the-nose. A joke entirely at his expense.

His breath clouds the mirror.

“You know I’m such a fool for you.”

He rinses his mouth out with Listerine until it feels ice-burnt and empty.

iv.

“You know she’s dead, right?” Steve says, even though he wasn’t going to say anything. “The singer from that band. She died last year, I googled, she drowned drunk in her bathtub.”

A pause. Billy’s too buzzed to look anything sharper than sort-of-mildly-vaguely-in-the-middle-distance interested.

“Like. _Bad_ vibes.”

Maybe Billy hears the question, _why’d you send it, what were you trying to say_.

“You take shit so serious,” he says, eyes very wide, teeth very white. “It’s not that serious.”

He claps Steve on the shoulder, warm, damp palm, the metal bite of his rings. Presses a little. Squeezes. For a second, Steve thinks — but Billy’s just pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. He rattles his empty Malibu can.

“Gotta refresh,” he says.

Steve watches him disappear into the kitchen, and then he leaves, because maybe Billy’s right and Steve takes things too seriously, but he’s starting to think Billy doesn’t take things seriously enough. Doesn’t take Steve seriously.

He walks himself back to his dorm, thinking about how big Billy’s hands felt, how his mouth would taste sickly, premixed-pina-colada sweet, how much he wants an answer, a straight-not-straight answer to the question he doesn’t feel brave or stupid enough to ask.

His room’s dark. His roommate’s out. His bed smells sour, like he left his sheets to sit in the washer too long. He feels stupidly, pointlessly close to tears.

And then his phone lights up.

_u kno_

_i wldnt let u drunk bath alone_

_ive got ur back_

_bonnie n clyde style baby id rob a bank take a bullet share a bath w u any day_

_just say the wrd_

v.

Robin says, “Since when do you and Billy Hargrove talk?”

Steve makes a face at his coffee. 

“We don’t.”

“Okay,” she says, blinking down at his phone, “but like. You are. Currently.”

“What,” Steve says. He pulls his chewed up straw into his mouth with his tongue.

“He’s messaging you. You want to open it?”

She pushes his phone towards him. Steve is very tired of being alone with his _Billy_ thoughts. He pushes it back.

“You,” he says, around the straw. Watches her take the phone back, open Messenger. Watches her eyebrows pull down, the corners of her mouth pull up. 

“Huh.”

“What’s he say?”

Robin shows him. It’s not a message, it’s a picture of a book, Billy’s hand awkward in the bottom of the shot, splaying the pages open, chipped polish and mood ring on his thumb. The band is an oil-sheen sort of amber.

He squints. 

Robin makes an impatient noise, passes him the phone. 

On the rightmost page, a poem. _Meanwhile_. Billy’s underlined two lines: 

_I sleep. I dream. I make up things  
that I would never say. I say them very quietly._

Steve feels a little nauseous.

On the opposite page, a single paragraph, _24_. It’s at a weird angle, Steve doesn’t think he’s meant to read it, but Billy’s underlined the whole thing. It starts, _you’re in a car with a beautiful boy._ He doesn’t let himself look any further.

Robin seems to be waiting for a reaction. Steve hasn’t figured out what he’s looking at.

“So,” she says.

“So?”

“So Billy Hargrove reads Siken, _apparently_.”

Which doesn’t clarify anything.

“ _Rob_ ,” he says, and means _help me out here_. 

She takes a long, rattling sip of his drink, more melted ice than coffee.

One finger up, “You’re _definitely_ talking.” Second finger up, “Your boy had a tumblr account in twenty-thirteen.” Third finger up, “He wants to fuck you, but like. With _feelings._ ”

Steve goes back to his room, and he googles Siken, and he reads all the poems on the Yale Younger Poets website, and he doesn’t understand any of them, just feels a horny, self-loathing kind of sad, but there’s one bit, one chunk, in a poem about dogs and a dead person, that he thinks — _yes._

He screenshots it, and sends it back to Billy.

_I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything,_  
_couldn’t do it anyway,_  
_just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made_  
_any sense, anything._

He’s not sure what he’s saying, but he hopes Billy’ll get it. Hopes it was meant to be a conversation.

vi.

One week, two weeks, midterms start, deadlines pass, midterms end, it’s Halloween and — nothing.

A week and a half ago, someone posted a candid of Billy in the library, shoes kicked off under the table, sitting in his chair with one knee tucked up under his chin. Steve thought he could see a tattoo on Billy’s ankle, but he didn't zoom in. The caption said _cryptid sighting @ j paul leonard_. 

Billy posted a blurry Insta pic of the moon five days ago, no caption.

On Spotify, this second, Billy Hargrove is listening to Frank Ocean. _Bad Religion_ , a slow, sincere sadness, salt in an open sore.

It’s mid afternoon. Steve’s back in bed, curled up on his side. He’s got his laptop resting on its edge, so he can stare at the swimming screen and pretend he isn’t falling asleep. 

He’s falling asleep.

He’s falling falling falling, and then his phone buzzes somewhere in the sheets and his stomach lurches like there’s somewhere to fall to.

A message from Billy.

It’s a picture of the wall of his room, the same grim mushroom-beige as Steve’s. Pinned up, slightly lopsided, a paper garland of cartoon ghosts, joined at the ghostly hands. 

For a minute or two, the picture sits there, contextless.

And then a second message, _sorry fr 👻ing._

Something thrums hummingbird-fast in Steve’s throat. His inhale stutters around it.

_boo._

vii.

Robin takes him to the farmers market, fried onions, the fresh green of bundled basil and parsley and mint, a gradient of apples, sweet to sour, soft to crisp, green to russet to warm wine red, beeswax-y soaps and pine-herbal winter wreaths and soft knitted things and dried lavender and the smell of hot spiced cider.

She thinks it’s good for his soul. He thinks she’s into the girl who sells kettle corn. 

They’re probably both right; Robin gets them a bag and the stapled-on label has a number scrawled over it, Steve gets fresh orange juice and feels sweet-tart-sweet-hearted about life.

She snaps a picture of him in front of a produce stall, prodding at the last eggplants of the season, tells him to, “hold it, just hold it, the light’s really good.” 

Posts it on Insta with the caption _anything’s a dildo if you’re brave enough._

Which is awful, but she’s right about the light, so. 

It isn’t even a surprise when Billy slides into his DMs.

_u dnt need to go window shopping_

_i got all the 🍆 u need right here_

_homegrown baby_

viii.

“You’re not growing _shit_ ,” Steve says, under his breath. He pokes at the sad gray skeleton of an aloe.

Billy’s windowsill is a graveyard of potted plants.

Maybe it’s whatever’s hanging in the air, making his room smell like the inside of a Lush store. Patchouli and sandalwood and citrus and weed. Maybe it’s the sunlessness, window facing a blank brick wall. Maybe Billy’s right, and the girl on his Philosophy course really _did_ curse him.

“Hey, space cadet,” Billy says, from his bed. “C’mere.”

He’s scruffy, stubbly, sleepy-eyed. He’s worked thumb holes into the sleeves of his sweatshirt. 

Steve’s head most-of-the-way over heels and miserable about it. 

He comes. He sits. He feels Billy’s hand on the mattress behind him, the warmth, the almost-brush of his thumb against the small of Steve’s back. He feels the expanse and collapse of Billy’s lungs with every breath like they’re touching. He thinks, _God, maybe maybe maybe_.

But Billy’s pulled up Facebook on his phone, wants to bitch about people they knew in high school, their bad life decisions and worse political takes. 

Steve watches his mouth, and lets him.

ix.

It’s early December, but California doesn’t have seasons, or weather, so they’re sitting in the grass outside the library.

Billy’s looking sort of art film, propped up on one elbow, knees splayed, jeans cuffed and no socks. A vape pen on his lower lip like an old school cigarette holder. He takes lazy pulls, breathes artificial cinnamon into the air between them.

Steve’s never thought about ankles before, but he’s looking at where Billy’s cross, the weird-delicate nubs of bone. 

Can see the tattoo finally — a flower. Steve doesn’t know what kind, except that it isn’t a rose. The stem of it curves up around the bone, the head shaped like a phonograph, the leaves like hearts.

He’s got a term paper due. He’s doodling, stem, flower, stem, flower, up the margin of his notes. Doesn’t look up when he says, “What’s with the —.” 

Waves his free hand in Billy’s direction.

“Trying to quit smoking,” Billy says. 

“Huh.”

Billy catches the tone.

“Huh?”

“It’s just — I _just_ watched this video,” and if Billy were Robin, the conversation would be over. She calls it his well-actually voice. But Billy’s not Robin, and he just blinks at Steve, weirdly attentive, blows a thick stream of gray. “Apparently it’s like — better for your lungs, I guess, but you can end up way more nicotine-dependent.”

Billy’s half-smiling, like he thinks Steve’s being funny.

“Oh yeah?”

“ _Apparently._ ” The smile lines deepen. “I dunno, it’s all Big Tobacco anyway. Just, like, a couple mega corps who get half their money from smokers and the other half from kids they’re getting hooked and ex-smokers who’re trying to _un_ -hook themselves? It’s fucked.”

Another stream of gray, sickly spice-sweet.

“That’s capitalism, baby,” Billy says.

Steve feels like his skull is full of Red Hots. He waves his hand again, like he can waft away the way that Billy settles over his skin.

“Also, you have literally the worst taste.”

Billy breathes out, sucks the vapor back. Breathes it out again, thinner, fainter.

“Hey,” he says, “my _taste_ doesn’t have to be your problem.”

Steve can see what’s coming a mile away. 

(Billy winks at Steve when he catches him coming back from a run, Steve pink and damp and off-guard. Calls, “nice form,” from across the street.

Billy winks at Steve when his cheeks are chipmunk-full of green juice to, like, balance ten straight days of take out.

Billy never sends the wink emoji, but he sends a winking version of his Memoji, which is both obnoxious and deeply uncanny.)

“Unless you want it to be,” Billy finishes, pink tongue and white teeth and big, cartoon wink.

x / xi / xii.

Fall semester ends with a whimper.

Steve’s not going home for the holidays, and California Christmases are never white, and Robin claims she’s spent too much time working customer service to enjoy any of the hits, so instead they get cheap-red-wine-drunk and maudlin to Sufjan Stevens’ _Songs for Christmas_. 

He wonders if this is what growing up feels like. Climate change and fascism and utter, paralysing uncertainty. Christmas gradually losing its Christmas-ness.

On the twentieth, Steve breaks one of Robin’s awful novelty holiday mugs, a reindeer with a sculpted red nose and two horn-shapes on the rim that stab him in the cheeks with every sip. Wine soaks into the carpet. He looks at the mess, feels a little hysterical about it. 

“Why me,” he says, to one of the reindeer’s eyes.

Robin pats him on the head. “Rough year, huh.”

On the twenty-first, he goes on a Starbucks run as penance for the mug, and the _wine_ , and the _carpet_. Billy’s sitting by the window, FaceTiming someone, and when he sees Steve, he calls him over. Pulls him into frame. 

“Guess who,” he says, and the tiny screen-Max waves. 

Residence is over, and Billy’s calling home, which means he’s probably not going back to Hawkins for Christmas either. 

Steve messages Robin, _WHY ME_.

On the twenty-second, Robin wants go to Golden Gate Park for the light installation at the conservatory. She makes a group chat. Billy’s down. 

And it’s not festive the way that the Indianapolis lights are, pine trees and snowflakes and red-green-gold. It’s palm trees and tropical leaves and blue-purple-pink. The air is thick and earthy and warm.

But Billy takes this picture of Steve without him noticing, the projections stretching geometric blue-glow, dark-shadow shapes across his face and the white of his t-shirt. It’s sort of dreamy, grainy and low-def the way most of Billy’s Insta photos are. The caption’s just the blue and pink firework emoji. Steve’s a little obsessed with it.

Robin sends him a string of eyes emojis. 

He doesn’t reply until three in the morning, when he’s trying, failing, to sleep. Every time he closes his eyes — Billy, face glowing aqua like they’re underwater, Billy, magenta light glowing through his lashes, Billy blue and purple and pink.

_WHY ME ???_

On the twenty-third, Steve panic-buys: cinnamon gum; a fist-sized hunk of aquamarine, Billy’s birthstone, according to the very patient woman at the crystal shop; a book of poetry by Frank O’Hara, recommended by Robin; a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses; and a ring shaped like a shooting star, coiling band and single, blue-green gem on one end.

His ribs start feeling creaking-tight.

He goes back to his dorm and puts it all in his sock drawer. Slams the drawer shut. 

His Co-Star notification for the day says _BE MORE HONEST._

He has no idea where to start. 

On the twenty-fourth, they get stoned and watch Wes Anderson movies on Robin’s floor. She’s adamant that _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ counts as a Christmas movie. Steve’s unconvinced. Billy shows up late, so he doesn’t get a say.

And Steve drifts, loses the pastel-colored plot because Billy’s close enough that he can smell the rain-dampness under the collar of his jacket as he shrugs it off. 

His phone lights up.

_what have you got to lose_

He looks up at Robin, and she’s looking right back. She raises her eyebrows at him, the dropped question mark.

He doesn’t open his phone, doesn’t reply.

The bubble of their laptop-screen world is cotton candy pink. Billy’s breath is stale smoke green. Steve is suddenly blue blue blue (Christmas).

_why are you so scared of being happy_

He turns his phone off entirely.

When they leave, Robin hugs him so hard he feels like she’s leaving fingerprints on his shoulder blades.

“You know I love you,” she says, very low, and Steve nods into her hair.

He gets home and turns his phone back on. Replies to the latest message notification, tired-eyed, clumsy-fingered.

_whats the deal_

_give me a couple yrs n i’ll tell him_

On the twenty-fifth, Steve wakes up to a message from Billy.

_tell who what_

And his skin prickles hot-cold. 

He opens his chat with Robin, scrolls up, scrolls back down. There’s nothing after the two messages he’d seen the night before. And, like. He knows. He _knows_. But he opens his chat with Billy anyway, scrolls up.

_hey_

_u and rob r bein super sketchy rn_

_whats the deal_

_give me a couple yrs n i’ll tell him_

_tell who what_

He starts typing faster than he can think.

_nothing sry, wrong person_

Deletes it into blank, waiting whiteness again.

His Co-Star for the day tells him to _MAKE A CONNECTION._

His thumb hovers. 

_Be honest_ and _make a connection_ and _why are you so scared of being happy_. 

"You gotta make chances, and then you gotta take them."

Billy’s eyes and Billy’s mouth and Billy’s hands and Billy’s absolute attention. 

Steve tries something new.

_come over_

o. again, but different, or maybe just the beginning of something else entirely

Billy Hargrove is in Steve’s bed.

It’s Christmas Day, but it’s a stripped-naked, surreal Christmas Day. The light outside is brittle-bright, and it’s painting a lemon yellow square on the wall next to Billy’s head. Steve’s eyes are still sleep-gritty at almost noon. Billy brought coffee, got two free gingerbread men, and no one’s drinking straight Advocaat on the side. There’s no rush, no sotto voce arguing as Elvis croons through the wall, just the coming-going sounds of cars and seagulls.

(“Steve,” Billy’d said, on Steve’s threshold. The buzz of whatever he’d started to say next had lit up the inside of Steve’s mouth as Steve kissed him, careful, like a question.)

(“Please,” Billy’d said. His stomach had twitched under Steve’s cold fingertips, his breath had stuttered in. When the exhale came, it tasted spice-sweet.)

(“Tell me,” Billy’d said, into Steve’s hair. And Steve had mouthed his answers into the warm salt-stretch of Billy’s neck. 

_I look for you. I feel every message you send me in the pit of my stomach. I write and re-write messages back to you. I hear songs and think about you. I read poetry to try and make sense of you. I want your hands on me. I listen to everything you say. I like knowing that you listen too. I have a drawer full of gifts I don't know how to give you._

_I’m trying to be brave._

_I think we could be happy._ )

“C’mere,” Billy says, and Steve will, in a heartbeat, will fall back into bed even though Billy’s got crumbs in the sheets. 

But for now, just for a second, for the shutter-click time it takes to make a memory, Steve stands in the doorway.

Billy Hargrove is in Steve’s bed.

Steve clicks the door shut behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> merry christmas, happy holidays & here's to a new year of sharing stories !


End file.
